


Today You Were Far Away (And I Didn't Ask You Why)

by LadyMerlin



Series: It’s like a train-wreck (beautiful and deadly) [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Additional Warnings Apply, Angst, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/F, F/M, In case you were worried, Irene Adler is still a lesbian, John still doesn't understand, M/M, Past Recreational Drug Use, Pining, Potential Relapses, Running Away, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Sherlock is not healing, Sherlock is running away from his problems, Temptation, Unrequited Love, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:10:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMerlin/pseuds/LadyMerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock needs to get away. He needs to not be Sherlock Holmes, for a while. He’s exhausted, and not really thinking straight. So he leaves. He left town, now he’s leaving England. He can only hope that the distance helps. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if it doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today You Were Far Away (And I Didn't Ask You Why)

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So… The Sunday update didn’t happen. Sorry about that. Somehow things didn’t work out. And then the last ep really took it out of me, so I’ve been on a bit of a crying jag for a while. The muse curled up in a corner and refused to cooperate, so here it is, two weeks later. This was intended to be the third in the series but I’ve written it first, so it’s going up in that order. The timeline’s allll over the place, so forgive me for that. I had no fucks left to give. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is unbeta’d, so any constructive criticism will be taken gratefully. The title comes from ‘About Today’ by The National.

“Good grief, Sherlock,” she says, and it’s the first thing she’s said to him in years. “I told you he’d break your heart.”

“Bragging isn’t an attractive quality, Irene,” he responds, because there’s no point even denying it anymore. Irene owes him. She owes him big time. He’s calling in his favour. He can’t handle London anymore.

They must look an odd sight, standing near a luggage carousel in LAX. For all that he is Sherlock Holmes, he has to wait for his baggage like everyone else. If there is one thing he has learned in his time away from London, it is that he is as human as everyone else. He is as susceptible to the things that plague ordinary human beings. He can bleed. He can collapse from exhaustion. He can starve, and fall sick. He can ache with loneliness.

He hadn’t believed it, himself, before.

Only a fool continues to hold mistaken beliefs once given incontrovertible proof that he was, in fact, wrong. Sherlock Holmes has lost everything, but he is not a fool. Not in these things, anyway. Apparently he is susceptible to foolishness in matters of the heart, too.

Irene looks like summer. She’s wearing a perfectly fitted white dress, and her dark hair is in stark contrast, swept up into smooth wings on the side of her head. Her lipstick is bright and her eye-make up is expertly done. She still has her assistant, he thinks, and they’re still in love. Happiness sits well on her; she’s glowing and the overall effect makes her look like a Greek goddess, one of the kinds Sherlock had read of, in pilfered children’s books on airplanes around the world.

Sherlock knows he looks like death, imperfectly microwaved. It’s a wonder they didn’t make him check in his eye bags, and if someone had bothered to look past his frown (he couldn’t stop frowning, or clenching his teeth – he didn’t like not being in control), they’d have seen… absolutely nothing. He is blank.

He feels like it, too. Like everything’s been poured out of him, and he’s been emptied out of every emotion, ever memory of good things. There’s nothing left, worth examining.

“Christ, Sherlock. I’m not bragging. I know you won’t believe me, but I wouldn’t have wished this on you. You don’t deserve it.”

He hauls his half-empty bag off the carousel (it hasn’t been tampered with) and she does him the courtesy of not responding to the phone buzzing in her pocket. “How do you know I deserved anything else?”

She studies him, and he studies her back. That is, after all, what they are good at, the two of them. Sherlock doesn’t think he’s good at anything else, really.

“Come on, Sherlock. Let’s go home.” She holds his hand and leads him from the crowd, with him trailing his single piece of luggage behind him. He has left his laptop behind. He doesn’t have anything in his hand-carry, except his passport, a credit card from Mycroft, and his ID.

One-hundred per-cent of his attention is focused on the soft, warm press of Irene’s hand in his. It doesn’t burn the way John’s hand had burned, on the back of his neck, that night. He doesn’t remember having been touched in a very, very long time.

-

John wakes up in a bedroom that looks like it came straight out of a catalogue. Mary is curled into him, her face tucked into crook of his neck, and she’s smiling. He doesn’t remember having been this happy in a long, _long_ time. She’s warm and soft and she smells like _home_ , and it is the most perfect morning in the history of all mornings.

They have a breakfast in the great hall, still decorated from the previous night, smearing jam onto scones left over from the afternoon reception. They sit beside each other on a table in the watery morning sunshine, feeding each other and touching like they can’t quite believe they’re there, together.

Sherlock had been wrong. He’d said it wouldn’t have made a difference. But Mrs. Hudson had been right. Marriage changes you. John’s never been married before, but he feels it, deep in his bones. This is more than going to a party, signing some papers and carrying on as per normal. He feels—. It’s just—it’s not the same. And he doesn’t know why, but he can tell that Mary agrees. She’s Mrs. Watson now.

The day’s going to breeze by. The flight to Spain’s scheduled for this evening. They’ll be there for a week; the first of many holidays together. They’ve been packed for a while now, in anticipation. They just need to make sure everything’s sorted with the hall, and that Janine will be able manage the clean-up. She’s a brilliant manager, so it should be easy enough for her to handle. She’s got Mrs. Hudson to help out, who for all her bluster has the eyes of a hawk. The two of them will be fine.

All John and Mary need to do now, is to get their stuff, get back to the flat, and hightail it for the airport. It’s going to be _fantastic_.

-

Irene’s house is in her image. It is light, and clean, and elegant. It is also overly dramatic, but Sherlock knows he’s in no position to throw stones. They have negotiated a truce. That is his favour. She has responded in magnificent form.

He has no doubt that Irene is going to do her level best to ‘cheer him up’. So when he’s shown his room, spacious and clean and smelling of citrus fruits, he does her the courtesy of cleaning up.

He could remain in his room, unwashed and unkempt, until someone is forced to come in to clean the sheets and throw him in the wash with them, but there is a very small step between that, and the cocaine. The only risky thing about LA is how easy it would be to get some. Or anything, really. Of course, he’s Sherlock Holmes. He’d be able to get cocaine anywhere in the world, if he wanted it. But on their drive from the airport to Irene’s home, he had seen at least three dealers, and a truly absurd number of users.

Temptation has never needed to call his name. He has always been able to find his own way. And now, when he’s weak, it will only be more difficult to resist the siren call of oblivion. He’s aching and empty and blank. Cocaine will bring the colours back into his world. He wouldn’t even turn down some LSD at this point, but the thought of the look on his mother’s face… On Mycroft’s face… ~~On John’s~~

It’s going to be a struggle. But he doesn’t have a real choice. He has to survive this. He can’t give up. (He doesn’t know where that path would lead, and he’s not sure he wants to).

-

Just before they leave the hall, Mrs. Hudston bustles up to them, in her element, organising the clean-up. She kisses them both on the cheeks, congratulating them effusively. It’s lovely. And then she presses a paper envelope into John’s hand.

He’d recognise that handwriting in his sleep. They open it, and he might not be musical in any way, shape or form, but even he knows what it is.

Mary’s got her hand pressed to her lips and she looks so utterly radiant, and the ring on her finger fills John was happiness until he thinks he could float away and never come back down. “Where is Sherlock, anyway?” he asks, because he can’t leave without thanking Sherlock for last night. He’d been amazing.

Molly is passing by, her arms filled with neatly folded tablecloths, and she pauses and looks at him with some strange emotion in her eyes.

“He left, John. Last night.”

John huffs out a laugh, because yeah, Sherlock wasn’t the type to put up with crowds any longer than he had to. “Must have been a case.” He looks at the score fondly, and tucks it back into the envelope. He knows where he’s going to keep it. He’ll text Sherlock a thank you before they leave.

“Yeah,” Molly says faintly. “A case.”

Oddly enough, John thinks, as he leaves, he can’t think of a single reason why Molly Hooper would pity him.

-

Irene is probably exactly what he needed. That doesn’t mean he enjoys his time there. She is perceptive, and sharp. She doesn’t take any nonsense, and staunchly refuses to be manipulated. That’s not to say that he doesn’t try.

Sherlock _hates_ crowds. He _despises_ society events. And he _loathes_ Irene’s friends. Vapid idiots, the lot of them, blithering on about fashion and movies and _pop culture,_ like it’s something even worth knowing. They remind him of his school mates in Eton.

He has to play along. He ends up doing truly obscene amounts of research, which puts his deductions about specific high society people into telling context. It’s… a distraction. Irene takes him to plays, to movies, to concerts. She takes him dancing and they get a new wardrobe for him, even though he honestly doesn’t care.

Irene has picked up opera, at some point. She holds small, intimate performances and charges truly exorbitant sums for entry. She convinces him to play beside her, and he does. He has nothing else to do, anyway, and somehow people are looking past the sullen eyes and the permanent frown to compliment him, to praise his skill with the violin. No one treats it like a trick, or a game. It feels good.

She teaches him how to smile realistically, when his heart is breaking on the inside. She says something about how every girl learns to smile through the tears when she’s young. She tells him that many-a-time it’s about faking it, until it’s real. She probably uses some catchy phrase to impart her knowledge, but Sherlock is, again, not a fool.

She speaks from experience.

He listens, and he learns. There’s nothing else to do, anyway.

-

“Hello, Mycroft? It’s John Watson here, sorry, I was wondering if you had a moment?”

“Yes, I know who it is. I’m awfully busy Dr. Watson, is this urgent?”

“Sorry, I was just wondering if you’ve seen Sherlock? I can’t seem to get in touch with him.”

There’s a beat of pin-drop silence. “Sherlock Holmes is fine. Do not concern yourself with his affairs, Dr. Watson. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some important business to conduct. Have a good day.”

“Huh,” John says, looking at the phone in his hands, a little surprised. That had been the coldest brush off he’s ever received from Mycroft, and that’s saying something.

“What happened?” Mary asks from the kitchen. She’s making sure they have enough wine for dinner tonight. The neighbours are coming over and Mary wants to ask about good preschools.

“It’s been a while since he called me Doctor Watson. I thought we were past all of that.”

“Do you mean Sherlock’s brother? Has he heard from Sherlock? What does he do, anyway?”

“Yeah. He says Sherlock’s fine. I think it’s worth more than my life to know that,” he says in response to her last question. “Sherlock once said he’s the British Government, when he’s not too busy being the Secret Service, or the CIA on a freelance basis.”

Mary drops a glass in the kitchen, and cuts herself on a shard. The line of thought is forgotten.

-

Sherlock doesn’t like the weather in LA. It’s weird. It is overly warm indoors, and overly cool outside. There is no cooling apparatus, or heating apparatus. Irene is well off, so there is an air-conditioner which keeps them at a barely acceptable eighteen degrees. But his body is still confused most of the time.

It’s one of those nights when they’re lying on a couch in Irene’s living room, and Sherlock has given up all decorum to press against the cool marble floor. Amy, Irene’s girlfriend, is very pretty, and very American. She is as unlike Irene as it is possible to be. She’s clever, but not brilliant. She’s pretty but not gorgeous. Her smile is somewhat crooked, and still. Still, Irene looks at her like she’s hung the moon and the stars in the sky.

Irene looks at Amy the way Sherlock had looked at John. The way Sherlock probably still would, look at John.

He wants to say that he hasn’t thought about John the whole day, but that would be a lie. He wants to have not thought about John, though, and that’s not a lie. That’s the honest to god truth of the matter. He’s exhausted. He doesn’t want any more of it. He wants his traitorous heart to _stop_.

But he’s scared (terrifiedpetrified) that the day will never come.

He waits for a lull in the conversation, and then he asks. “What do I do?”

Irene and Amy exchange looks, and then turn to look at him. They have different shades of pity in their eyes and he _hates_ that, too, but he’s used to it, now. Apparently he wears his heartbreak on his sleeve. He keeps wondering why John had never noticed. And if he had, why he’d not said anything. When he starts thinking those questions, Irene forces him to go out, and to be distracted, so he hasn’t yet thought of an answer. But he’s used to their pity now.

“It’s not going away. What do I do?” he wants to carve his heart out of his chest and leave it somewhere in the desert to die, if that would help. But it won’t. For the first time in a long time, he wishes he were the sociopath he has always claimed to be.

But he’s not.

“You go home, Sherlock. And you live your life. You can’t do anything. There’s no end goal to heartbreak. It doesn’t bundle itself up and go away. You go back to London. You solve cases for the Met, and for your brother. You have tea with your landlady and steal corpses from the girl at the morgue. You run around London and go home and have takeaway. And you look for a new flatmate, or a new flat. You carry on, Sherlock. There’s nothing else you can do. One day, you’ll stop missing him.”

Sherlock opens his mouth in an instinctive protest. He can’t possibly get a new flatmate. He can’t possibly leave Baker Street, it’s home! But then, he can’t stay there. (He’ll never stop missing John).

He has always known that choices are only difficult when there are alternatives. (He’ll never stop missing John).

This is not a choice. This is an eventuality. (He’ll never stop missing John).

He’ll go home (and miss John). He’ll solve cases (and miss John). He’ll have tea with Mrs. Hudson (and they’ll miss John). One day, he will bleed out in the streets of London, or he will drown in the dirty waters of the river Thames. When water has flooded his lungs and his life blood has stained the cobblestones of the city he loves, with his last breath and the faltering beats of his broken heart, he will miss John. 


End file.
